5 Christian Women Open Up About Their Decisions to Have Abortions

Reconciling faith and the decision to have an abortion can be complicated.

By
Bromleigh McCleneghan

Apr 6, 2017

Thirty-two separate bills related to abortion have been introduced to Congress already in 2017, a number of which are based in religious or moral beliefs. Take, for example,the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would give full legal rights to human zygotes from the moment of fertilization. Or there's HB174 and SB41, two bills that would provide religious liberty protections for crisis pregnancy centers, organizations that typically try to dissuade women from having abortions and which are often religiously affiliated. There's also the Conscience Protection Act, a bill the would protect health care providers who decline to be involved in abortions because it conflicts with their beliefs.

While many of the groups supporting those acts, like the National Pro-Life Religious Council or the organization National Right to Life, have Christian ties, Christian women's beliefs about abortion are much more complex and varied than the legislation might lead you to believe. Of Catholics who attend Mass weekly, 42% say abortion is not a moral issue, according to Pew Research Center data from 2016, and 54% of abortion patients identified as Christians in a Guttmacher Institute study published that same year. Ahead, practicing Christian women talk honestly about their decisions to have abortions.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"For a time afterward, I quit praying." —Moira*, 35

I live in Texas, and I've been an active Christian and pro-life for as long as I can remember. When I was 32 years old, I was dating someone I loved and I thought loved me. Even though I'd previously always been abstinent because of my faith, he pressured me, insisting that the "man has authority over the woman." I worked at a really conservative Christian organization, and my employer-based insurance wouldn't cover the pill or an IUD, so condoms, which are less reliable, were our only real option. When I found out I was pregnant, I was just gutted. Our organization was publicly, emphatically, opposed to sex outside of marriage; if I'd come to work as a single, pregnant woman, I knew that at best, there'd be a scandal, and, at worst, I feared they would fire me, leaving me without benefits or a salary.

Worried about losing my job and not wanting to build a life with this guy who had pressured me to have sex, I just couldn't see myself carrying the pregnancy to term. I had always assumed that a fetus was A Life, one imbued with a soul, that I would immediately love and have a connection to… but I didn't. I think that's how I was able to have the abortion. All the things I'd believed about pregnancy didn't match my actual experience, so though I felt bad in the abstract, getting the abortion was not as emotionally painful as I feared.

Even though I made my decision pretty early on, getting the abortion was difficult. I had to travel over an hour each way to Houston, Texas, where one of the few remaining clinics in the state is, and I had to go twice: once for an ultrasound and again for the pills. Honestly, I tried to dissociate myself: from the experience of pregnancy, from the doctor's "counsel," from the abortion procedure. It helped when the doctor made it clear that he did not buy into the state-mandated script he had to read to me; he didn't bully me about my choice, so I felt free to do what I had to do.

For a time afterward, though, I quit praying. I think I was scared what I might hear from God. I could barely say the words aloud – that I had been pregnant, that I'd had an abortion. I think it would have been easier to bear if I had any support, but I was too ashamed – about the premarital sex, about the abortion – to reach out to anyone right away. Eventually, I told a friend who is a pastor, and she reminded me that God is always on the side of the vulnerable, of those in trouble. I still wrestle with wondering whether what I did was a sin, but I keep praying, hoping to find peace.

"I was being more faithful in my walk with God by ending the pregnancy." —Annie, 35

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

When I was in grad school, I slept with my ex-boyfriend one night after we'd broken up. Since it was unplanned, we didn't use any protection. I immediately regretted that, and the sex itself. I found out I was pregnant shortly thereafter and had my abortion as soon as it was possible to get it scheduled, at 8 weeks.

I had some degree of shame at the time: about "letting myself get pregnant," although clearly accidents happen; about having sex with my ex, though I am certainly not the first person to do so. I also felt stuck. I was working as a single, female youth pastor at a conservative church in Texas that I believed would have fired me for being pregnant and unmarried. I doubted they would think a sexually active single woman the right role model for a youth pastor. The congregation's general tenor was also anti-abortion, and I didn't want to risk them finding out.

Still, I never doubted that I would terminate the pregnancy — I had always been pro-choice, and long believed that being "pro-life" is about more than making abortion harder to get; it's about good sex education, available contraception, and honoring all life, not just the "unborn." I was not in the right place to have a child, especially not with my ex. So I didn't.

I felt no doubt that I was being more faithful in my walk with God by ending the pregnancy than I would have been if I had gone through with the pregnancy. Having a baby at that point would have meant turning away from my call to ministry. I was not ready to be a mother, and so it never even occurred to me to keep the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. I was not ready to carry a child, and I didn't want to bring a child into the world without being able to give it a home.

After the abortion was over, I felt relief. I didn't have any regrets. I did tell my now-husband while we were dating, because I felt it was important he know. I didn't want any secrets between us, and I wanted to know that he would have supported my decision as well as my authority to make it. Now, I have had two healthy pregnancies and two beautiful children. Abortion did not ruin my life or harm me irrevocably – physically or spiritually (contrary to a lot of rhetoric). In fact, my abortion in graduate school allowed me to follow my calling into ministry, and bring wanted children into the world when I was ready to be a mother and able to give them a stable, loving home.

When I was a teenager, I was drugged and raped at a party before my junior year of high school. I was a virgin when I went to that party, and I had never been drunk — I was such a "good girl" that at first I didn't even recognize why I felt so funny and hazy. I hadn't planned on drinking, so I thought maybe someone had just spiked my drink with alcohol. I never even thought about drugs.

After I realized what had happened, I was shocked, terrified, and confused. Not just for what I was going to do, but because I didn't want to risk my reputation with my Methodist pastor. I was really active in my church, but it wasn't the kind of church that took political stances or informed how I thought about sex. I basically thought being a good Christian meant being a good person – leading a socially-acceptable, scandal-free life. I wasn't pro-life or pro-choice so much as hoping to never have to take a position on it.

I turned to my best friends, who were Roman Catholic, and while I know there are a lot of pro-choice Catholics, they were not. They said I was being selfish; that I had decided to have sex and having an abortion would be sacrificing a child because I didn't want to deal with the consequences of my choice. The fact that I'd been raped and hadn't chosen this at all didn't seem to make a difference to them.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I felt desperately alone — the people I had turned to didn't give me the support I had needed, and I was afraid to tell the adults in my life. Finally, I looked up my church's official teaching on abortion. At that time, the United Methodist Church's position was that the church mourns the situations women can find themselves in, but supports a woman's ability to make the decision she and her family need to make. It was the grace I needed to trust my own instinct, the promise that this one action wouldn't determine the rest of my life.

I was lucky, in many ways, that I got to Planned Parenthood early — I was able to have an abortion at 10 weeks by taking RU-486, otherwise known as a medical abortion or the abortion pill. I lived in upstate New York at the time, so even though I was just 16, I didn't have to have parental permission or notification. I didn't want to use their insurance, so I covered the $400 cost with money I made through my after-school job. It took me about an hour to work up the courage to go inside, but once I did, the staff was kind and understanding.

Over the next decade, I grappled with the shame and silence around my abortion; my parents still don't know. I knew God didn't judge me, but I wasn't convinced God's people wouldn't, based on the way my friends had responded and the ubiquity of anti-abortion rhetoric from some Christians. This is what I consider the great failure of churches like mine, which, in theory, understand the complexity of this choice: We're publicly silent. We don't offer a pro-choice Christian position, an alternative narrative. That's why I'm telling my story now.

"I felt God's love and desire for me to do the best thing for me." —Sonja, 38

My work as a pastor has always been bound up in women's rights: I've volunteered with Planned Parenthood, I've marched on Washington, and I've lobbied for reproductive rights. The God I worship and the gospel I preach is about good news for the poor, about liberation for the oppressed. Still, I didn't know if I would ever choose an abortion for myself. I honestly didn't ever expect to have an unintended pregnancy.

My partner and I were living in New Jersey, talking about moving across the country together for his military job, but I was really waiting for a proposal before I decided to go. I wanted to know that he really wanted us to be together, for us to have a future.

So when I found out I was pregnant, in that moment of uncertainty about our future as a couple, I knew immediately in my gut that I would get an abortion. The timing was just not right; I did not want to be a single mother, and if I was going to have children with this man, I wanted it to be while we were married. I was surprised by how much being unmarried mattered to me, but I've also learned to trust my instincts — that's often how I experience God, with the conviction and reassurance of my gut.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I didn't doubt that I would have the abortion, but I did wonder what this accidental pregnancy, and my decision, would mean for our relationship. He said it was my body, my choice — and I agree that the woman should always have the ultimate authority.

The decision may have been quickly and certainly made, but I was surprised by how scared I felt to tell others about it. Maybe because as an educated, privileged woman, I felt ashamed for an accidental pregnancy, because I have all the resources to avoid one at my disposal and I didn't use them in this instance. Maybe because, for as sex-positive as our churches claim to be, you can still find pockets of judgment about children born "out of wedlock."

I was living in New Jersey at the time, and I had two options: either a surgical procedure or the abortion pill. I was nervous about the pill – not knowing how long I'd be bleeding or how I'd be affected – so I elected to have the procedure done at Planned Parenthood, under general anesthesia. It cost more than I thought — $500 without insurance.

The really frightening thing in the end was not the uncertainty or pain, but sitting in the waiting room with all these other women, many of whom were in far more difficult circumstances than I was. A teenager who just seemed so lost, a woman who was scared her boyfriend would dump her, a woman who had had multiple abortions. I found myself praying for them — and I don't mean to sound pious, my prayer was mostly What the f*ck, God?!

No matter my ambivalence about finding myself pregnant, having the abortion was absolutely the right and faithful path for me, and I felt God's love and desire for me to do the best thing for me. That's what God wants: what's best for us all.

"Our pastor made the experience holy, as strange as that sounds." — Rachel, 38

I have always been ardently pro-choice, and held that position along with my faith as a liberal Episcopalian. But for many years, I never had cause to seek an abortion myself.

In fact, after years of infertility and miscarriage, my second pregnancy was desperately longed for. But we received what's called a "gray" diagnosis. Some abnormalities are very clearly black and white: incompatible with life or not. In our case, the abnormalities indicated that our daughter might have lived for many years, but she would have needed constant care. She would have had severe physical and cognitive impairments. We live far from family in a state, Texas, with limited supports and resources for those with disabilities. We do not make a lot of money — we both work in churches.

We agonized but we never really wavered. We were not opposed to abortion. We had rejoiced over this pregnancy. And now we were choosing to end it. We did it because we believed our child would suffer in this world. And we could not let our child suffer. Out of love for her, we suffered grief ourselves so that she wouldn't suffer.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

It was a heartbreaking decision on its own, but there were things that made it worse and some things that made it better.

There are two places in Austin that could do the procedure, but they couldn't get me on their calendar for almost three weeks. That's how backed up they are, because state laws had shut down so many clinics. I made the decision at 13 weeks, but couldn't get in until 16 weeks. By then, I was too far along for a D&C (Dilation and Curretage), which is the most common type of surgical abortion. I had to have a D&E (Dilation and Evacuation), a more involved procedure which, in my case, was a two-day process. In Texas, the laws mandate a 24-hour waiting period. So I had to go three days in a row. I had insurance, but even so, the procedure cost over $700.

Those laws — many supported by Christian lawmakers and lobbyists — made my suffering, and that of my daughter, infinitely worse by prolonging and complicating the process.

The priest of our Episcopal Church, though, was amazing. She came with us on the last day of the procedure. She anointed me with oil and we prayed together in the room. She sat with us for hours — before, during, in recovery, and afterwards, sending us home with more prayer in the parking lot. She made the experience holy, as strange as that sounds.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Redbook participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.